One story, one soul…for God and his kingdom

Allysa walks slowly behind her kids at the zoo. She marvels at how they have grown. It feels like yesterday when she gave birth to her first and now, no one is even holding her hands. How time flies, she muse.

“Mom! Mom!” Come look at the flamingos! Aren’t they cute!” Her daughter Maya squealed

“They are alright” Jake shrugged 

“I wasn’t talking to you!” Mara bumps her older brother Jake on the shoulders.

“Ouch!” He replies jokingly and walks off

“Don’t go too far!” Allysa yelled after him 

“I just love me all things pink,” Mara said, looking at the flamingos.

“They are cute.” Allysa said absentmindedly. Now that her kids are grown sort of, she plans to get back to work. But she doesn’t know what that would look like.

 It has been so long since she’s been in a corporate workplace.. It feels like a different world to her. She has an interview coming up. Her husband tells her that she would do fine, but she doubts herself. It feels parenting and motherhood has drained her of her spunk.

She let out a sigh. 

“Mom, let’s go see what’s over there!”

Mara said 

With one last look at the flamingo, Allysa turned to go, her eye caught the info board on the flamingo, she stopped to read,

“Mom! Come on! Mara said exasperatedly

“Hold on one second Mara” Allysa replied as she continued to read. Her eyes went to the trivia section.

“Baby flamingos are born with gray feathers and feed only on the crop milk from the parents’ digestive tract.

Parent flamingos lose their colors as they feed their young, sometimes turning pale or white. It literally drains the color of the parent flamingo, whether male or female”.

“Tell me about it” Allysa said under her breath and read on.

“But that’s not the end of the story, as the young chick learns to feed itself, the parent flamingo eventually regains their colors.

How cool is that!”

“Mom, come on!” Mara starts to pull her hand. Allysa looked back at the pond at the flamingos, she noticed that a few had faded colors.

“The parent flamingos regain their colors, maybe…maybe… me too can.” She thinks to herself 

That gave her hope. 

Roses are red, the sky is blue and mothers are special..